UAW strike: The latest as action against Big Three automakers enters fourth day
Zachary Halaschak
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The biggest auto strike in years is entering its fourth day as workers and management struggle toward a contract agreement. Here is the latest on the strike and negotiations.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain announced the strike last Wednesday evening. This strike is the first work stoppage to involve all the Big Three Detroit automakers, although not all plants have been shuttered. Just three factories face strategic stoppages: one Ford plant, one GM facility, and one Stellantis plant.
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The UAW represents nearly 150,000 members, making it the largest auto union in the United States. Some 13,000 members, or about 8.6% of the union, are involved in the stoppages at the three plants — the GM Wentzville Assembly, Stellantis Toledo Assembly Complex, and the Ford Michigan Assembly Plant’s final assembly and paint departments.
Negotiations continued over the weekend, with union talks with Ford being held on Saturday, with GM on Sunday, and with Stellantis on Monday, ABC reported, citing a union source who called the talks “reasonably productive.”
Yet Fain told NPR on Monday that there were “minimal conversations over the weekend, so the ball is in their court. … We have a long way to go.”
The two sides began the strike far apart on key demands, including top-line pay. The union wants a big 36% pay bump over the coming four years. Such an increase would push wages as high as $43.52 per hour for some workers. Fain also wants to have four-day workweeks that would see members working 32 hours for 40 hours of pay.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen weighed in on the situation on Monday morning. She reinforced the White House’s position, which is that negotiations should continue in earnest, with the outcome being a fair contract for workers.
“President Biden has made clear he expects them to work hard — to negotiate 24/7 to get to a solution,” Yellen told CNBC. “And so, we’re hoping that will happen soon.”
She also addressed concerns about how the strike, particularly if it becomes more enmeshed and drawn out, would affect the broader economy. While only three plants are involved right now, there is the possibility that the union could shutter more in order to apply pressure in negotiations.
“It’s premature to be making forecasts on what it means for the economy,” Yellen said. “It would depend very much on how long the strike lasts and exactly who’s affected by it.”
“The two sides need to narrow their disagreements and work for a win-win,” she added.
Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi told CNN that a six-week auto strike would reduce GDP growth in the fourth quarter by about 0.2%.
Fain, who was recently elected to lead the UAW by running a campaign in part pushing for a more confrontational stance in contract negotiations, has attempted to highlight the contrast between executive pay at the automakers and worker wages.
The UAW released a video on Monday that pointed out that, in the past four years, the automakers’ profits have increased by 65% and CEO pay has “skyrocketed” by 40%. Spending on stock buybacks is up 1,500%, Fain said in the video.
“They pretend that the sky will fall if we get our fair share of the quarter of a trillion dollars the Big Three has made over the past decade,” Fain said. “They want to say that our righteous fight for a higher quality of life for the working class would wreck the economy.
“We’re not going to wreck the economy,” he added. “We’re going to wreck their economy because it only works for the billionaire class.”
There have already been effects of the strike being felt by union members. Ford announced on Friday that it is temporarily laying off 600 workers because of the interconnected nature of the assembly line at the Michigan plant.
“Our production system is highly interconnected, which means the UAW’s targeted strike strategy will have knock-on effects for facilities that are not directly targeted for a work stoppage,” Ford spokeswoman Jessica Enoch said in a statement. “In this case, the strike at Michigan Assembly Plant’s final assembly and paint departments has directly impacted the operations in other parts of the facility.”
The union, meanwhile, framed the layoffs as a ploy by the automakers to put pressure on union membership amid the contract fight.
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“Let’s be clear: if the Big Three decide to lay people off who aren’t on strike, that’s them trying to put the squeeze on our members to settle for less,” Fain said in a statement. “With their record profits, they don’t have to lay off a single employee.”
Talks are expected to continue this week as the two sides push for an agreement.